No more tuitions - EdSense makes learning in school fun, effective

Learning needs to be fun. It should also be tailored to each child’s mental and physical capacity, and should fulfil the basic function of imparting knowledge such that it has maximum retention.

Parents and friends Kiran Jupudi, Sunil Sathyavolu, Vijay Pothula, and Vivek Chandramohan, seeing many gaps in the current education system, set about to address that and launched EdSense. In a system where the only measurement criteria for a student is the marks s/he scores in school, EdSense aims to make education more effective.

Using AI, the platform still uses marks as the base, but identifies patterns in each child's learning habits, disposition, and aligns learning/teaching strategies accordingly. It offers detailed learner profiles, and personalised course recommendations. The platform also offers training for teachers, equipping them with advanced teaching methodologies.

The four co-founders started off with a survey of over 200 people – parents, teachers, students and school administrators - in Hyderabad to understand the effectiveness of the current educational system and used its learnings for EdSense. “We all have over 15 years of experience in varied fields such as education technology, digital supply chain, service management, operational excellence and project management,” Sunil says. “We were inspired to do something about it,” he adds, speaking on improving the quality of education in India.

The business

The EdSense platform hosts content to supplement the school curriculum, and helps teachers keep abreast with new teaching methods. “All modern edtech platforms can be our partners, and we work with academicians to build content to enable schools to make learning accountable,” Sunil says .

Founded in September 2017, EdSense has already clocked a revenue of Rs 1 crore. The founders invested Rs 1.2 crore from their personal funds. The company has 22 clients as of now, but does not want to reveal them.The platform also has a mobile app – Stitch – that can be used by children to enhance learning. EdSense has tied up with Harvestational School, Bengaluru; Glendale Academy, Hyderabad; Keystone International School, Hyderabad; and five branches of Mount Litera Zee School.

Never an easy beginning

To start off, the EdSense team had to convince schools, and chose to collaborate with senior academicians for this. “We reached out to schools and started free pilot programmes to demonstrate the toolset we developed that could save time and induce formal procedures to the education management. The advice and feedback we received in the pilot stage were very helpful in understanding their needs and fine-tuning the services we provide,” Sunil says.

EdSense initially started with six schools for its pilot programme from November 2017, and two of these turned into its first paying customers. “We shared a lot of ideology and vision with the first four customers whom we chose to provide our services to. The validation our product received with two paid customers is priceless. One of them is a top school in Hyderabad, while the other is one of the top 10 international schools in Bengaluru,” adds the co-founder.

Solutions like SafeinCity and Purnatva work with schools to keep students safe, but there aren't many that are making the existing education ecosystem use technology to be accountable, opines Sunil. By tracking a child from an early age, the EdSense software can tell parents and teachers about the development of the child.

“Education remains a biggest challenge whose outcomes can be solved by technology,” says Mohandas Pai, founder of Aarin Capital, who has invested in Byju’s, the learning platform.

By the end of the year, EdSense aims to on-board 75 schools in three states under a paid subscription model, and have at least 50 schools on board for a pilot. Currently, its sales conversion rate is 90 percent and it is in discussions with several large school networks. By the end of 2019, EdSense aims to sign up 200 CBSE schools, 20 engineering colleges, and 20 business schools using its paid subscription model.

Education is projected to be a $110 billion industry in India in 2019, according to the Indian Brand Equity Foundation. The future is already here, and EdSense is betting on making education sensible for every child signing up with it.